The first full week of November is here, and with it comes a time change for those of us in the United States who gained an extra hour of sleep on Sunday morning. Unfortunately, we don’t feel any more rested, which is why we were up an hour earlier this morning seeking out all the news that you’ll want to read about for this fine Monday, November, 7, 2011.
Google’s recent overhaul for Reader has some users seeing red, so naturally enterprising developers are taking advantage of the situation by finding creative ways to hide the new look from former fans of the RSS reader. One such developer has even gone so far as to skin Google Reader to look like Reeder, the popular iOS and now Mac app of the same name. Unfortunately, Reeder for Chrome only works on Google Chrome, but if that’s your browser of choice anyway and you like the look and style of Reeder, you’re just a click away from some serious satisfaction. The download is free, but donations are also accepted if you like the developer’s work.
We don’t hear all that much about Google TV these days, despite a recent update to Android 3.2 Honeycomb and some serious fire sale pricing on the hardware which brings it in line with the Apple TV, Roku and other solutions. That all changed when adult video distributor Vivid announced the introduction of “the first TV app designed to make sexually explicit content available through the new Google TV set-top device.” According to The Los Angeles Times, Google will allow the app, which will stream “award-winning adult movies, celebrity sex tapes, XXX parodies of popular superheroes, educational videos and other content” to owners 18 years of age or older. Given Apple’s “no porn” policy with iOS, Vivid’s move could indeed give Google a leg up in its battle against the Apple TV. (Um, pun intended…?)
It’s a shame after all these years that the Mac is still relegated to a single clipboard, but it doesn’t have to be that way. One of the best and brightest solutions has just received a major update with developer Chronos releasing iClipboard 4. Available for $29.99 (single user) or $49.99 (family pack), iClipboard 4 offers a new floating shelf mode as well as the ability to sort and search clippings, paste rich text as plain and much more on top of existing features such as bulk pasting and the nifty Paste Blaster. Upgrades from previous versions are also available, and you can try it out for yourself thanks to a downloadable 30-day trial version on the Chronos website. The company also send their customers an email announcing they are ending support for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard starting with iClipboard 4, although the previous version 3.3.0 will continue to work just fine.
When it comes to raw benchmarks, the virtualization offered by Parallels Desktop 7 is the winner once again -- at least that’s the verdict from MacTech Labs, who just posted the results of their exhaustive head-to-head analysis of VMware Fusion 4 pitted against Parallels Desktop 4 for Mac. Both virtualization solutions are slick, full-featured offerings, making it difficult for many users to choose one over the other. MacTech is quick to note that its findings should not be viewed as a product review but rather as a benchmarking analysis, where Parallels came out ahead of Fusion “in the vast majority” of the tests. Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac won 60 percent of the tests by 10 percent or more, and by an even wider margin where 3D graphics are concerned. Hit the link to read the full details!
Apple began taking preorders for the iPhone 4S in 15 more countries last Friday, and it appears they have a hit on their hands. According to MacRumors, the new handset sold out in a record 10 minutes in Hong Kong, where Apple recently opened its first retail location there. Ticonderoga Securities analyst Brian White overstates the obvious by describing the news as “a very positive sign for iPhone 4S demand in Greater China as Hong Kong represents the first entry of the new smartphone in the rapidly growing region and we expect the 4S to reach Mainland China in December.” Meanwhile, Barron’s notes that Apple “is experiencing daily stock outs at ~85-90 percent of the ~30 retail stores we called,” resulting in customers being forced to make an online appointment for next day pickup.
Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter
